Essex, England
Christened as "The Most Haunted House in England," the Borley Rectory presented paranormal expert Harry Price with quite a quandary. In June 1929, a newspaper carried the story of the phantom nun. Price was asked to investigate the many oddities including, not only sightings of the nun, but strange lights, whispers, footsteps, a phantom coach, and apparitions of a girl in white, a headless man, and the spirit of Henry Bull who built the house.
Legend said a monastery once stood on the site and during the 13th centurey, a monk and a nun fell in love and tried to run away together, a move completely taboo in those years. Their attempt was thwarted -- the monk was hanged; the nun bricked up into a wall.
Price heard and reported hearing rapping sounds, bells and other moving objects. Henry Bull died in the home and his, son Harry, inherited it. Price swoon learned that Harry wasn't unfamiliar with the sightings. He'd actually gone to great lengths to have a large veranda built onto his home with a nice view of the nun's favorite strolling place. Harry died in 1927, also on the property.
Reverend Smith, successor to the rectory, wasn't nearly as amused as Harry Bull. He left after only a year, plagued by the events that he'd witnessed.
A dramatic increase in activity came with the next owners, Reverend Foyster and his wife, Marianne. More noises were heard, voices, windows were broken, furniture relocated itself. Yet it was Marianne that seemed to spawn the worst activity and for some reason, most of the spirits took an instant dislike to her.
Repeatedly, she dodged hurtling items, she was thrown from her bed, slapped by invisible hands and nearly suffocated once by a mattress. The something most extraordinary happened: one of the bound souls reached out to her, at least according to Price's beliefs.
Scrawled messages, often illegible and making little sense, appeared on the walls. Witnesses saw them written by an invisible, ghostly finger! Phrases like "Marianne please help get," "Marianne light mass prayers," and "Marianna with help (unknown) to home," decorated the rectory walls. Rumor via Ouija boards is that spirits are notorious spellers and often make little sense when they write, usually through someone else if they manifest to that extent. Marianne's friend seemed to prove the theory. Price maintained that one of the spirits was begging Marianne for help. He believed it to be a Catholic female due to the content and later, his findings would seem to strengthen his theory.
The Foysters eventually left in 1935, and this time, Price himself rented the house for a year in order to intensify his investigations. He ran an ad in the paper seeking help and several opeople volunteered, eager to witness some of the events firsthand. Some brought equipment for photography and some decided to rely on more other-worldly experiments like seances.
During one such sitting, a story came out that proved rather interesting. They used a Ouija board and the spirit identified herself as Marie Lairre. She was a nun in France and met Henry Waldegrave, the son of a wealthy family. They married and lived in the opulent home that once stood where the Borley Rectory was built, and it was there she was strangled to death by the hands of her husband. She said that her remains were buried in the cellar. (A sidenote: I've found nothing to prove it, but there's several Waldegraves in England with royal names, such as Earl, Lord, etc. Perhaps there was no choice but to rid himself of her, possibly for posterity?)
Certainly, the puzzle pieces fit well with the phantom nun, the messages and the distorted tale about the nun and the monk that local legend told, even if the man in question wasn't actually a monk.
During another seance, a spirit warned that the rectory would burn down that night and that the nun's remains would be found. The night the spirit spoke of actually took place 11 months later. Price was no longer renting the home, but he did manage to sift through the charred remains and uncovered a few bones that forensics found belonged to a young woman.
Price believed that the nun was doomed to walk the property because she'd been buried in unconsecrated ground. To rectify the situation, he gave the bones a proper burial. Surprisingly, it did seem to put the spirit of the nun to rest.
The house's skeleton that stood in ruin from the fire was officially demolished in 1944. The property still has it's fair share of spooky sightings and events. Price died in 1948, and since then, people have continued to try to prove he misinterpreted things or somehow hoaxed the whole thing. Thus far, no legitimate theories have been found.
